Rural Poverty

UNIT 3 RURAL SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Structure
3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Caste System
3.2.1 The Concept of Caste
3.2.2 Caste in Villages
3.2.3 Caste and Class
3.2.4 The Jajmani System
3.2.5 Social Mobility in Indian Villages
3.3 Families in Rural India
3.4 Nature of the Distribution of Power in Rural India
3.5 Let Us Sum Up
3.6 Key Words
3.7 Suggested Readings and References
3.8 Check Your Progress: Possible Answers

3.0 OBJECTIVES

The aim of this lesson is to introduce you to the different aspects of rural society in
India. After having worked through this unit, you should be able to:
• Describe the organization of Indian villages;
• Describe the nature of castes and classes, and the cases of upward social
mobility;
• Define jajmani system;
• Talk/write knowledgeably about the family system in rural India; and
• Analyse the nature of power in villages.

3.1 INTRODUCTION

Village community, family and caste are the basic components of the rural social
structure and they bind the economic and social life of people in rural areas.

In order to understand this social structure, it is necessary to understand the nature

of society. Each society consists of different parts, such as individuals, groups,
institutions, associations, and communities. The simplest analogy one can think of at
this point is that of an organism that has different components working together as
a whole. Society is a system like any other system, such as the solar system, the
chemical system, a mechanical system or an organic system. Of these the most
suitable analogy for elaborating the concept of society is that of an organism. This
is usually known as the ‘organic analogy’.

You are perhaps aware that the basic unit of an organism is the cell; similarly the
basic unit of a society is the individual. As cells combine, a tissue is formed. In the
same way, an individual exists in relationship with other individuals. A collection of
individuals is called a group, and the smallest group comprises two individuals; it is
known as the dyad. In an organism, the tissues aggregate and the resultant entity is
an organ. In the case of human society, like the individual, no group exists in isolation.
The collectivity of the groups is termed the community. In an organism, the organs
47
Rural Society and combine to form the organism, which is the whole. In a similar fashion, the aggregation
Economy of several communities makes the whole called society.

What is social structure? Sociologists use the word ‘social structure’ to refer to the
inter-relationship, inter-connectedness, and inter-dependence of the different parts of
society. In terms of their form, all societies have the same parts. Thus, there are
groups and communities in all societies, but the nature and substance of these groups
and communities differ from one society to another. For instance, an Indian village
is unthinkable without the caste system, while a Chinese village does not have castes.
Its units are the people of different families and occupational groups. The sense of
identity that the people of different groups have is also seen at the level of the people
of different families and occupational groups in Chinese villages. The inter-relationship
of the different units constitutes the structure of the society.

All the units of a society are supposed to be important, for each one of them makes
a contribution to the functioning of society. In other words, none of them can be
dispensed with. But, in each society, some of its elements are regarded as crucial,
because the society is structured around them. Sociologists think that for defining an
Indian village, its population, physical structure, and modes of production are definitely
important. Usually, a village has less than five thousand individuals. As a physical
entity, it is an aggregation of houses of mixed architecture (some of mud and thatch
and some of cement) in the midst of surrounding agricultural fields—the mainstay of
village life is agriculture. Of course, there may be some exceptions to the image of
village that is presented here: for instance, a village may have more than ten thousand
people, as is the case in Kerala. Or, the village may be a conglomeration of beautifully
built cement houses inhabited by people who may predominantly be in service or may
be self-employed non-agriculturalists, as is the case in a number of villages situated
near towns and cities in Himachal Pradesh.

In addition to these indices, sociologists think that the social structure of an Indian
village is understood best in terms of the interrelationship of different castes, as a
common proposition is that the caste system has weakened in urban areas, but not
in the rural areas, where even the members of non-Hindu communities, which have
opposed the caste system, have continued to be treated as ‘castes’. In the section
that follows, we shall discuss the caste system in detail.

Check Your Progress I

Note: a) Write your answers in the space provided.
b) Check your answers with the possible answers provided at the end
of the unit.
1) Define the term social structure.
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2) Where do you find the most populous villages in India?
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 Rural Poverty
3.2 CASTE SYSTEM

3.2.1 The Concept of Caste

Caste is the main social institution of Indian villages. Referred to as jâti, jât, zât or
various other local terms, it is a collectivity of people, related also by the ties of
kinship and marriage, which has a ‘monopoly’ over an occupation. It provides its
specialized services and the products of its occupation to other caste groups. Harold
Gould characterizes caste as a ‘monopolistic guild’. The occupation on which a caste
has monopoly may be very simple. It may not involve any elaborate technology and
skill, and may be learnt easily without much arduous work, such as the occupation
of the caste of messengers, or drumbeaters, or vegetable-peelers. But no caste will
ever venture to usurp the occupation of any other caste howsoever simple and less
specialized it may be.

Under the ideology of caste, one’s merit lies in subscribing as conscientiously and
diligently as possible to the duties prescribed for one’s caste. The political bodies of
the village strictly deal with any case of usurping the occupation of other castes.
Among other things, the occupation related to it gives identity to a caste. Sometimes,
the castes are also named after the corresponding occupations. For example, those
who ‘supply oil (tél)’ belong to the téli (oil-man) caste; those who beat drums (dhols)
are dholîs; and those who dye (rangnâ) clothes belong to the rangrez caste. The
occupations are hereditarily transmitted.

Members of a caste marry within their own caste, but usually outside their own
village. In other words, the village is exogamous, while the caste is endogamous.
At one time, in some upper caste communities of Bengal (such as the Rarhi Brahmins)
and Gujarat (such as the Patidars), the men had the privilege of obtaining spouses
from lower castes in addition to spouses from their own caste. Such a system of
marriage, in which the men of upper castes marry women of lower casts allowing
the lower caste women to move up the hierarchy, is known as hypergamy (anuloma).
The contrary system, where women of the upper stratum marry men of the lower
stratum (i.e. where women move down in the hierarchy), is called hypogamy
(pratiloma).

That the classical Hindu tradition permits hypergamy, but not hypogamy, is clear
from Manusmriti, the Hindu law book authored by a sage known as Manu. It allows
a Brahmin man to have spouses from Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Sudra castes in
addition to a spouse from his own caste. Kshatriya men are permitted to have three
wives: one of their own caste and the other two from Vaishya and Sudra castes
respectively. A Vaishya can have two wives: one from his own caste and the other
from Sudra caste. A Sudra can have only one spouse belonging to his/her own caste.
Children born out of hypergamous marriages are legitimate but they do not have the
same rights over the property of their father, as do the children from endogamous
marriages. One of the consequences of hypogamy is the excommunication of the
couples concerned. With the passage of time, such couples established new castes.

A person acquires the membership of his or her caste by birth, i.e. caste is ascriptive
in nature, and theoretically, it cannot be changed, i.e. it is immutable. The chief good
of a person lies in living according to the culture and duties (dharma) of his caste.
According to this ideological system, leading a life according to the dictates and
commands of one’s caste not only ensures one’s existence in this world, but also the
world hereafter, as one will have an improvement in one’s caste status in the following
births. Why one is born in a particular caste is explained in terms of the deeds
(karma) one had done in his or her previous birth. It may be noted that basically
caste system is a ‘system of ideas’ derived from the classical tradition of Hinduism.
M.N. Srinivas once wrote: ‘The structural basis of Hinduism is the caste system.’ 49
Rural Society and 3.2.2 Caste in Villages
Economy
A village may be conceptualized as an aggregate of castes, each traditionally associated
with an occupation. Members of a caste are generally clustered together, occupying
a particular physical space in the village, which may come to be known after the
name of the caste like dhobîbârâ (i.e. the settlement of the laundrymen), jâton ka
gudâ (i.e. the habitation of the Jats) or raikon rî dhânî (i.e. the hamlet of the
Raikas). Each caste has its own style of living, its own types of clothes, its own
distinct pattern of houses, and mutually acceptable common grounds for existance.
It also has its distinct dialect, folk deities, lore, and ceremonies. The members of a
caste are spread over a region in more than one village. The members of a caste
living in nearby villages have matrimonial relations among them. Each caste has its
own council (panchayat), which is a collective body of the members of that caste
living in different villages, but situated close to each other. This body takes up all
disputes between the members of the caste and discusses all instances where the
identity of the caste is abrogated and is in danger. Thus, for political purposes, social
control and matrimony, the members of a caste in a village are dependent upon their
co-caste fellows in other villages. These relations result in the unity of the members
of a caste spread in different villages. M.N. Srinivas has called this type of unity
‘horizontal solidarity’.

In Rajasthan, a common saying is that generally there are thirty-six castes (chatris
quam) in a village. But, in actual fact, no village is found to have all the castes.
Moreover, the total number of castes far exceeds thirty-six. Two points need to be
remembered here.

First, since all the occupational and service castes are not stationed in one and the
village, the members of a caste in a village depend upon the services of castes
situated in other villages. In such a context, the village market (hât) plays a significant
role, because a large number of artisan castes come to it with their specialized
products. For instance, Surajit Sinha studied the weekly market at a village called
Bamni in Singbhum district of Jharkhanda. He found that the average number of
castes in a village of this district is about six. In these weekly markets, however,
goods and services of some sixteen artisan castes are available in addition to the
products handled by specialized traders of some other castes. All this substantiates
the point that the Indian village was never a self-sufficient unit. In a village, different
castes depend on one another for various services. Such dependency relationships
(i.e. those among the various castes living in one and the same village) result in what
M.N. Srinivas has called ‘vertical solidarity’.

Secondly, when Indian villagers talk of ‘thirty-six castes’ or ‘thirty-three crore Hindu
gods and goddesses’, what they imply is that there are ‘many’ and ‘very many’
things of which they are speaking. These numbers should not be taken literally. As
for the castes, their number is not stable; it keeps on increasing over time and in some
cases small castes get merged into bigger ones. As noted earlier, often in the past,
sections and sub-sections of tribes moved to multi-caste villages, adopted an occupation
and acquired monopoly over it, and with the passage of time came to be known as
a ‘caste’ in their own right. Thus, all along there has been a continuum from a tribe
to a caste.

3.2.3 Caste and Class

Caste, as we have seen, is the fundamental principle of social organization in the

Indian village. As Louis Dumont said in his work titled Homo Hierarchicus, castes
are arranged in a hierarchy based on the principles of purity and impurity, which
in fact give distinctiveness to the caste system, because no other system of ranking
in the world makes use of these principles. The caste occupying the highest position
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is ritually the purest, and as one goes down the hierarchy, purity decreases while Rural Poverty
impurity increases. Those placed at the bottom of the hierarchy, the people who at
one time were called ‘untouchables’ (now they are called Harijans or Dalits) are
considered to be the ‘permanent carriers of impurity’ within the idiom of the caste
system. No other social system in the world incorporates the notion of ‘permanent
impurity’ with such rigidity as the caste system. There may be notions of ‘temporary
impurity’ (such as, impurity incurred by menstruation, death, or birth), which is overcome
with the performance of rituals, but no ritual can neutralize ‘permanent impurity’.

In the caste system, the styles of living are ranked. The way in which, for instance,
the Brahmins are expected to live is regarded the most superior, and those who are
Brahmins by birth have to follow only this lifestyle and no other. Ranking in this
system is not based on economic facts, i.e. the ownership or non-ownership of the
means of production. It is also not based on control over political power. Thus, both
economy and polity are subordinate to the ideology of caste, according to which
ranking is facilitated. The classification based on economic facts is called the class
system. Class is an indicator of the distribution of economic inequality in the society.
The term ‘power stratification’, on the other hand, is used for inequality in terms
of the decision-making ability, by which some, as Max Weber says, are able to
impose their will on others and seek compliance from them.

Ideally, class and power, as said previously, are subordinated to caste. A Brahmin,
even if poor, occupies the highest position in the caste hierarchy and commands
unlimited respect from other castes. At one time, the Kshatriya kings wielded power,
but the Brahmin priest officiated in the ritual that accorded them legitimacy to rule.
The producers of economic wealth, the merchant castes (the Vaishyas) pursue different
wealth generating occupations, and are placed just above those whose jobs are
principally menial, i.e. ‘to serve the other three upper castes’, as the classical texts
put it. In some parts of India, there was a clear overlapping of the three ranked
orders of caste, class, and power. For instance, both André Béteille and Kathleen
Gough, in their respective studies of villages Sripuram and Kumbapettai, found that
the Brahmins, who numbered around four per cent of the total population of South
India, owned around ninety-eight per cent of the land, which they abstained from
tilling because of religious injunctions that did not allow Brahmins to touch ploughs.
The Brahmins, who lived in their separate quarters called agraharam, were also in
control of political power. Therefore, being a Brahmin also meant occupying the
highest position in class and power hierarchies. This was an example of what after
Robert Dahl one would call ‘cumulative inequality’. In this case, social status together
with economic and political power are all concentrated in one group, the Brahmins.
The typical ‘Brahmin villages’ of South India have also been locally called
agraharavadai.

Surely, not all the villages in India followed the pattern charactristic of villages in
South India. In many other parts, the caste that controlled economic resources was
certainly not of Brahmins, nor even of Kshatriyas. In Rampura, the Mysore village
that M.N. Srinivas studied, the landowners were the peasants, the members of the
caste called Vokkaligas. In North India, the principal landowners were and are the
Jats. In such cases, economic stratification is independent of the other principles of
ranking, and can in fact influence them. Thus, those who control political power may
also be the landowners. In this case, different ranked orders do not overlap; they
rather exist independently. For such a system, one can use the term ‘dispersed
inequality’, for the group that occupies the highest position in one ranking system is
placed lowly in the other. Keeping this in mind, many sociologists make a distinction
between ‘ritual status’ and ‘secular status’ – the former emerges from the caste,
which is essentially a ‘ritual hierarchy’, while the latter emerges from the ownership
of economic and political power. When these two statuses exist independently, it is
a case of dispersed inequality; and when they overlap, it is cumulative inequality.
51
Rural Society and Although myriad varieties of social change have affected social stratification in Indian
Economy villages, perhaps one will not be wrong in saying that at one time, South India
generally had ‘Brahmin-centred villages’ whereas North India had ‘non-Brahmin
centred villages’. For the villages where non-Brahmin castes control economic
resources, the term pandaravadai is used in contrast to agraharavadai, the ‘Brahmin-
centred villages’.

3.2.4 The Jajmani System

Earlier, it was observed that the various castes living in a village are interdependent
because each one of them has a monopoly over an occupation. If some occupational
caste is not found in the local area, then some other caste may take up its occupation,
and develop specialization in it. For instance, the blacksmiths of Senapur, a village in
Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, also worked on wood because there were no
carpenters in that area, and so they made and repaired agricultural implements for
the landowner-peasants, the Thakurs. The interdependence between castes obtains
in two ways:

i) A caste provides its goods and services to other castes in exchange for payment
in kind or cash, but this payment is done instantly, and if deferred, it is for the
shortest period of time. A lot of haggling also enters this exchange. The relations
here are largely contractual and impersonal. They are quite like the relations one
will expect to find in cities and towns. In villages, such relations may exist
between the merchant caste and the other castes. The latter buy goods and
commodities from the shop of the local merchant, a man of the Vaishya caste,
and pay him instantly. If instant payment is not made, the shopkeeper may
advance credit, but before further merchandise is acquired, the buyer will have
to settle all the previous accounts. In some cases, the merchant may charge
interest for the amount on credit.

ii) By contrast to the first type of interdependence, the second type comprises
relations that are broadly supportive, group-oriented, long-term and continuing,
and they involve multiple bonds between people involved in the exchange. These
relations are durable, unlike the relations between the shopkeepers and the
buyers, where after one has bought the product and paid for it, the relation
comes to an end.

In villages, durable relations obtain mainly between food-producing families and the
families that supply them with goods and services. These relations are called jajmani,
the Hindi word for them as used in William H. Wiser’s study of a village in Uttar
Pradesh. In other parts of India, they are known by other names. For instance, in
Maharashtra, they are known as balutdari. Notwithstanding the differences in the
terms used, certain features of the system are common throughout India. Although
the jajmani system is regarded as a characteristic of rural India, it has also been
reported from urban areas. Sylvia Vatuk described the jajmani system that was in
operation in Meerut City.

In the jajmani system, at the center is the family of the agriculturist (zamindar). It
receives services from the families of occupational castes. One who receives services
is known as jajman, the patron. The families that provide services are known as
kamin, kam karne waley, or kamgars (workers). In other parts of India, terms such
as parjan, pardhan, balutedar, etc., are also used for the providers of goods and
services. All these words literally refer to the same people, i.e. those who ‘work’
for others, and one may call them clients. The implication is that those who do not
‘work’ (like zamindars, the big landowners) occupy the highest position in the secular
ranking; those who ‘work’ for themselves, the self-employed workers, come next;
and at the bottom of the system are placed those families that ‘work’ for others,
52
carrying out various menial jobs. The castes, which happen to provide services to the Rural Poverty
agriculturalists, vary from one village to another. And, not every caste in the village
happens to be a part of the jajmani system. The simplest definition of the jajmani
system can be: it is a patron-client relationship.

Although the jajmani relationship seems to be between castes, in reality, it is between

particular families belonging to particular castes. It is the relationship between families
that continues to exist over time. Jajmani ties are hereditary, i.e. various families
(belonging to various castes) keep on providing their specialist services to particular
agriculturist families generation after generation. The latter do not have the right to
discontinue the services of the families of serving occupational castes. If they are not
satisfied with the quality of the service, or they notice slackness on the part of the
service-providers, they are expected to bring this matter to the attention of the council
of the caste to which the erring family belongs.

These relations are not like wage-relations, which can be terminated after the transaction
is over. They are durable, in the sense they continue over generations. They are
exclusive, in the sense that one family will carry out its relations with only one
particular family of the particular occupational caste. Because of whatever reasons,
if a family is to move out of an area, it is its moral duty to find an alternative service
provider for its patrons. Many sociologists have found that jajmani rights are also
sold. The point is that no family (whether of the jajman or kamin) will move out of
the relationship unless it has provided an alternative to the other.

Earlier, it was noted that there are multiple bonds between the patron and the client.
The patron looks after all those families that work for him. He advances loans or gifts
to them at the time of festivals and other similar occasions. He safeguards their
interests and saves them from exploitation at the hands of others, i.e. the jajmani
system is based on the ideology of paternalism.

The clients continue to provide services throughout the year to their patrons. At the
time of the harvest, the patrons give their clients a portion of the produce, which in
North Indian villages is known as phaslana. The jajmani system is an example of
‘deferred payment’, which is entirely different from that in the wage labour. Further,
there is no bargaining on the amount of crop/produce given to a client. If the season
is lean, all suffer, be he the patron or the client. And, if there is a bumper crop, then
all are equally benefited. Generally, jajmani payments are made quietly, but there can
always be situations where the patrons publicize the size of payments they are
making, or the clients may show their unhappiness on receiving not-so-satisfactory
payments.

Some sociologists think that the jajmani system is exploitative. The agricultural
castes, which are invariably upper castes, seek the services of occupational castes,
which are generally lower castes, without reciprocating adequately. The exploitation
of lower castes continues under the garb of paternal ties. The opposite argument is
that the jajmani system is functional. It gives security to lower castes that they will
never go hungry. For the upper castes, it ensures a regular and uninterrupted supply
of services. Because of these relations, the village emerges as a unified body, where
the patrons organize rituals and activities that symbolically effect the unity of the
village. For instance, it is believed that some deities (known as Bhumia, Kshetrapal,
etc.) guard the boundaries of the village. The patrons regularly organize collective
worship of these deities. The overall picture is that those who receive the largest
number of services are the ones who are expected to care the most for the welfare
of the village.

In the last fifty years, the jajmani system has undergone many significant changes.
It has already been said that not every caste of the village participated in this system.
In addition to the jajmani relation, there has always been contractual, wage-labour 53
Rural Society and type of ties between the providers of goods and services and their buyers. Further,
Economy with the rise of the backward class movements in the recent past, certain castes that
were a part of the jajmani system have withdrawn themselves from it. The introduction
of cash economy has also brought about changes, because payments in the jajmani
system were always in kind rather than in cash. With the ever expanding commercial
frontiers, new opportunities have come up in towns and cities, and many occupational
castes have sought to take advantage of this situation. They move to participate in
these opportunities after seeking withdrawal from the jajmani ties.

3.2.5 Social Mobility in Indian Villages

As discussed earlier, a person born into a caste is expected to live according to its
lifestyle and perform duties that characterize it. Thus, being allocated by birth, one’s
caste cannot be changed. A person born into a caste will always belong to it as a
life-long member. In his/her future births, because of good deeds, he/she may be born
into a superior caste. In other words, theoretically, upward mobility is not possible
within the caste system, except for women who may move up by means of
hypergamous marriages. Similarly, downward mobility results from hypogamous
marriages.

Economic opportunities are considerably limited in villages. Agricultural surplus is not

significant either. Virtually nothing is left with the peasants after they have made the
jajmani payments. Barring the big landlords, others in villages live rather precariously,
often hand to mouth. Those, who have been able to move out to towns and cities for
work, have been able to make some money, which they have invested in buying
agricultural land, but the number of such families is not large. The point to be
emphasized here is that class mobility was also non-existent in the village. Power
hierarchy in villages depends on the control over economic resources. Therefore,
those who lagged behind economically would never hope to get any significant place
in political bodies. By considering the factors of caste, class, and power, one may say
that the Indian village was a ‘closed system’, i.e. it did not provide any avenues for
anyone to move up in the caste, the class, or the power hierarchy.

Undoubtedly, it is true that in villages the position of an individual is fixed once and
forever. This is in sharp contrast to urban areas where the individual is mobile, and
upward mobility is a cherished value. In spite of the formidable restrictions on one’s
mobility in the rural areas, there have been cases of the sections of lower castes
moving up in the hierarchy. There are cases of individuals becoming rich after their
having participated in the newer economic activities emerging in towns and cities.
Mobility from villages to urban locales has always been there. Whether this mobility
was triggered by rural poverty or the concentration of lucrative opportunities in urban
contexts is a different question.

The first person to show that the caste system was not truly immutable and that it
was not as stagnant as it was made out to be, was M.N. Srinivas. In his study of
Coorgs in Karnataka, he showed that originally they were tribals. With the passage
of time, they were able to find a place in the caste system, where they rose to the
position of the Kshatriyas. Srinivas termed this process of upward mobility in the
caste system ‘sanskritization’. It can be defined as the process of ritual mobility
whereby a lower caste or a tribe (wholly or partially) emulates the customs and
practices of the upper caste with an explicit intention of improving upon its own
status. It envisages its eventual merger with the caste whose customs and practices
it endeavours to follow.

Srinivas shows that the evidence for the existence of the process of sanskritization
is available in the ancient as well as the medieval literature, but it became an
important process of upward mobility with the advent of the British. A significant
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change that occurred in the Indian society under the British regime was that land Rural Poverty
became a marketable commodity; it could be sold and acquired in the market. Earlier,
it was inherited through the ties of kinship; it passed down in the family line, but could
not be sold and bought.

The other change that took place was the emergence of towns in the vicinity of
villages. These towns provided several opportunities, offering caste-free and class-
free occupations. The only occupation that happened to be caste-free in villages was
agriculture. Further, the pressure of population in villages, along with the emergence
of opportunities in towns, was sending people out to towns and cities, where they
participated in cash economy. Within a space of few years, they were able to earn
substantial amounts of money with which they could buy agricultural land in their
native villages. And, once they had attained economic power, they claimed a higher
ritual status, which they would certainly achieve, provided originally they were above
the line of pollution. There have been cases of castes below the line of purity,
which claimed upper caste status, but could not succeed in acquiring it mainly because
of their ‘polluting status’. Srinivas wrote that ‘Sanskritization does not help the
untouchables’.

Thus, changes have occurred in the position of castes by means of sanskritization.

It may be noted, however, that sanskritization was of no consequence to the upper
castes, such as Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas, for they were already
sanskritized, i.e. they already followed what Srinivas has called ‘sanskritic Hinduism’.
These castes were the first ones to opt for a Western way of life that came along
with the advent of the British. Srinivas has called the process of adopting the Western
lifestyles ‘Westernization’.

The castes below the line of purity tried, from time to time, their level best to move
up in the ritual hierarchy. They also had the pre-requisites for sanskritization, such
as control over the local economic resources. But, being below the line of purity,
they failed to establish marital and commensal (i.e. eating together) relations with the
castes whose lifestyles they were trying to emulate. Once their attempts to move
upwards failed, they had no option but to adopt the political path for bringing about
changes in their status. In other words, their mobility was not along the ‘axis of caste
status’, but along the ‘axis of political power’. Initially for these castes, but later for
all the castes, the route of politics grew in importance for purposes of upward social
mobility. All the castes realized that in a democratic setup each one of them constituted
a ‘vote-bank’, and they could exercise their pressure on the state for a better deal.
Thus, the caste became ‘an interest and a pressure group’ and politicization, i.e. the
process of adopting various political values, became a functional alternative to
sanskritization.

Thus, sanskritization was meaningful only for castes lying in the middle level of the
hierarchy, but then, these castes constituted the majority of them. In addition to the
cases of upward ritual mobility, sociological literature also acquaints one with the
cases of downward mobility in ritual hierarchy. In the study of a village in Haryana,
S.K. Srivastava found that the Brahmins were gradually assimilating the lifestyles and
occupational aspects of Jats, with the explicit intention of becoming one with them.
This case was the converse of the process of sanskritization, and Srivastava termed
it ‘de-sanskritization’. In Udaipur villages, S.L. Kalia found that some castes were
adopting the lifestyle of the Bhils, a tribal group. This was also a case of downward
ritual mobility. Kalia called this process ‘tribalization’.

To sum up, the Indian village was never a self-sufficient social or economic unit. It
had relations with the outside world. Benefiting by the changes emerging in it, many
people were able to find respectable places in villages. As a consequence, different
units of the village were able to move up. Upper castes adopted the Western way
of living and institutions. Castes below the line of purity had no option but to follow 55
Rural Society and the political path for ameliorating their status and conditions. Middle castes followed
Economy the process of sanskritization. Also, some upper castes tried to seek their identification
with lower castes. In terms of these four processes (viz sanskritization, Westernization,
politicization, and de-sanskritization), one may formulate a composite model of
social mobility in India.

Check Your Progress II

Note: a) Write your answers in the space provided.
b) Check your answers with the possible answers provided at the end
of the unit.
1) Write briefly about the concept of caste.
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2) What do you mean by a class in the context of an Indian village?
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3) What do you understand by the jajmani system?
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4) Do you think that sanskritization is still a relevant process of upward
mobility for lower castes in contemporary rural India?

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3.3 FAMILIES IN RURAL INDIA

Family is the cornerstone of human society. It is a universal social institution. Of the

many functions, the most important and non-transferable function it performs is the
socialization of children. Along with the changes occurring in the human society, the
functions of the family have also undergone change. In traditional societies, the family
performs many economic, political, and religious functions; thus, it is not a specialized
entity. With the passage of time, however, these functions are transferred to other
56
specialized institutions. The family, which is the unit of production in simple societies, Rural Poverty
ceases to be so when the market and the other specialized institutions take over the
function of production. In modern societies, the family becomes a unit of consumption.

During the course of its evolution, the family has shed many of its function in favour
of other institutions, and so, it has become a truly specialized institution in modern
societies. Talcott Parsons says that its first function in the contemporary American
society is to carry out the task of providing basic learning to children; this is the
function of ‘primary socialization’. Its second function is to help in the process of
stabilizing adult personalities. As the family is a primary group, resting on the sentiments
of affinity, love, and concern, it combats the strains and stresses that are generated
in the modern society, which is pivoted on means to ends relations.

Writing about India during the colonial times, Henry Maine stated that mainly two
cultural traits characterized India: the caste system and the joint family. The latter
was described as being found predominantly in villages. It was also considered an
ideal – a supreme value – to which every family aspired to approximate. In many
surveys, it was found that people preferred to live in joint families because of several
advantages that it offered. For example, both the old and the young could be looked
after well in joint families.

A joint family is defined as an aggregate of kinspersons who share a common

residence, a common kitchen, a common purse including property, and a common set
of religious objects. Generally, a joint family has a name, which in many cases is
given/taken after the name of its founder. It has a depth of more than two generations.
It is not uncommon to come across joint families that have members of four generations
living together. Joint families in India are patrilineal (i.e., descent is traced in the
male line, from father to son), patrilocal (i.e., all the males of the family live together,
while the females born in the family move out when they get married), and patriarchal
(i.e., men exercise authority).

The chief textbook of Hindu law, written in the twelfth century, the Mitakshara, has
codified the most significant characteristic of the joint family. Under this code, each
male is entitled to an equal share of the household property from the time of his birth.
Thus, all the male members of the family have equal rights in relation to the family
property. The oldest male called karta, however, has the exclusively right to manage
it on behalf of others. One of his main duties is to see that the family property is not
divided. The equal rights that all males have on the property are known as coparcenary
rights, which constitute the prime characteristic that defines the Indian joint family.

When speaking of an extended family, one’s emphasis is on the size of the family.
An extended family is a conglomeration of two or more nuclear families. On the
other hand, when one speaks of the joint family, one’s emphasis is on the fact that
all brothers/males are coparceners.

Although joint families are found more in the rural than in the urban areas, where
most of the families happen to be nuclear, one should not conclude that all castes in
a village have the tradition of joint families. It has been observed that upper castes,
which are also land owners in many cases, have a higher proportion of joint families
than the lower castes, the less propertied as well as the non-propertied ones, which
tend to have a higher number of nuclear families. Undoubtedly, there is a direct
relationship between the ownership of land and the joint family, because property
remains one of the important unifying forces.

The ideal of a joint family, as an institution in which each individual surrenders his
or her personal interests for the sake of the family and its unhampered continuity, is
hardly ever achieved. Till the time the head of the household is alive, he can succeed
in keeping all his sons together and the family property may continue undivided. After
57
Rural Society and his death, his eldest son would succeed him by the right of primogeniture, but it might
Economy become difficult for him to keep all the brothers and their wives together. Sooner or
later, they would all separate, each getting an equal share of the family property, and
each nuclear family, thus formed, would start its process of expansion, becoming a
joint family in course of time, and then breaking up once again and so on.
This process of ‘expansion-depletion-replacement’ of the family is known as its
developmental cycle. One of the suggestions that emerge from this analysis is that
a family should be studied as a process, as this approach promises a better understanding
of the issues at hand.
As in cities, the forces of modernization have also affected village societies, leading
to both occupational differentiation and geographical mobility. Members from the
same family take up different occupations. Once this occurs, it becomes extremely
difficult for brothers to live together; and being in different occupations, there is
bound to be inequality in their respective earnings. Such a situation does not arise
when they are all working as agriculturists on the same land, as whatever is produced
is for the consumption of the entire family. This system works well in situations that
do not have individualism and ‘individual consciousness’ is subordinated to ‘collective
consciousness’. With occupational differentiation crystallizes individualism and inequality,
making it difficult for the joint family to continue undivided for years and years.
Geographical mobility fits quite well with the nuclear family. When a married son gets
a job abroad or away from the village, he moves to his new locale alone, leaving
behind his wife and children under the care of his joint family. When he gets a place
to live, or is allotted family accommodation, he takes with him his wife and children,
rather reluctantly, because it is the beginning of the disintegration of the joint family
and the establishment of a nuclear family. This explains the preponderance of nuclear
families in urban areas.
Lastly, it should be kept in mind that the nuclear families emerging in India because
of the break up of joint families are very different from the nuclear families in the
Western world, where the expression ‘nuclear family’ implies a family that is
‘structurally isolated’, i.e. a family that has no dependency relations with any other
family whatsoever. Indian nuclear families are still embedded in strong kin bonds;
they are not isolated as are their counterparts in the West. In India people may live
in nuclear families, but they are dependent on their relatives, living in different types
of families, for varieties of help.
Thus, the Indian nuclear family is not ‘structurally isolated’. If ‘structural isolation’
is the main characteristic of nuclear families, then the Indian phenomenon needs to
be designated differently. Some sociologists are using the term ‘nuclear households’
to differentiate Indian nuclear families from their Western counterparts. They say
that so far ‘structurally isolated’ nuclear families have not emerged in India; instead
what has emerged here is a variety of ‘nuclear households’. Each one of them
comprises a man, his wife and their unmarried children. And each of these units has
long-term, stable, and multiple relations of interdependence with their kinspersons.

Check Your Progress III

Note: a) Write your answers in the space provided.
b) Check your answers with the possible answers provided at the end
of the unit.
1) Give three salient characteristics of an Indian joint family.
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58 ..............................................................................................................
 Rural Poverty
2) Explain one of the major reasons behind the break up of the joint family in
rural India.
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3.4 NATURE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF POWER IN

RURAL INDIA

The popular image of an Indian village is that it is free from conflicts and thefts.
During the course of their fieldwork, scholars have noted invariably that villagers
nostalgically remember the days when they did not need to lock their houses, for each
one respected the dignity and the goods of others. Consensus prevailed on almost all
issues, but if disagreements cropped up, they were amicably sorted out with the
intervention of the elderly. The rich parted with their excessive wealth for the welfare
of the poor. In some cases, people praised their villages for having never been visited
by policemen. Women were safe in all respects, and people adhered to religious
values and led a god-fearing existence.

Although it is an idealized version, which of course is far being exact, there undoubtedly
is a grain of truth in much of what has been and is being said about the village. In
comparison with the situation in towns and cities, inter-personal conflicts are fewer
in villages. The rich may not part with their wealth in favour of the poor, but they
certainly display a guardian—like supportive attitude towards them. General consensus
prevails with respect to the norms and values, which in any case are largely uniform
and hardly contradictory, and this is one of the reasons why there are fewer cases
of dissent and conflict in villages. Certainly, the hold of religion on traditional societies
is greater than it is on complex societies.

The conclusion one reaches from a comparison of the idealized view of the village
held by its inhabitants and the reality that exists, is that the village is not a stable,
stagnant, and changeless entity.

Conflicts emerge between the members of a caste and also between different castes,
and the contending parties do not always find it easy to solve them. Villagers in North
India say that conflicts between different people pertain mainly to the matters of land
(zamin), wealth (zar) and women (zanani). For reaching a solution to these conflicts,
each village has a council called panchayat, consisting of knowledgeable and upright
people, who pronounce impartial judgements, supposed to be binding on all.

In addition, as has been noted earlier, each caste has its own panchayat, which takes
up matters it is confronted with. For the sake of distinguishing one from the other,
one may call the village panchayat a gaon panchayat, and the caste panchayat, a
jati panchayat. The functions of each one of them are different, for they serve
different bodies. Besides resolving the conflicts between different families, a gaon
panchayat is also entrusted with undertaking the collective tasks of the village, such
as performing rituals for the welfare of the entire village, or organizing programmes
pertaining to the donation of voluntary labour (shramdana) for building a road or a
granary. A jati panchayat deals exclusively with the issues pertaining to the caste
concerned. For example, it may further the interests of the caste or, in some literate
contexts, it may publish a caste periodical.
59
Rural Society and A traditional caste council called panch (i.e. five) comprises a small but always an
Economy odd number of members. It listens to the cases of dispute and takes decisions
democratically. The odd number of its members helps in deciding cases by the rule
of majority when they do not reach a consensus. It is not necessary that a panch
will always have just five members, as is sometimes proverbially said. The idea of
five implies that the council is a small group and that the number of its number is
always odd.

Srinivas says that in villages, it is invariably the members of one particular caste who
exercise their dominance on others. To explain this phenomenon, he introduced the
concept of the ‘dominant caste’, which is defined in terms of the following criteria:
• numerical predominance;
• control over economic resources;
• control over political power;
• high ritual status; and
• the first-ones who have taken advantage of the Western education system.
It is not necessary that all these criteria have to be met for designating a group as
dominant. A dominant caste may not have numerical preponderance or it may not tilt
towards Westernization. The more important criteria, it has been emphasized, are
control over the factors of production and political power. In villages, the dominant
caste is usually associated with agriculture. Let us refer to Jan Breman’s data on
peasants and migrants belonging to Surat (Gujarat). He says that in the whole district
of Surat, the Kanbi Patidars occupy the highest status in the field of agriculture. They
own large portions of land, and with the passage of time, they add more and more
land to their already massive land holdings. Consequently, in this area, lower castes
have been reduced to a marginal status. In Rajasthan, even after the land reforms,
the ex-landlords (jagirdar) continue to own vast tracts of land and remain dominant
socially. It has also been seen that the dominant castes resort to violence to keep the
other castes in a state of submission.

Take an example to illustrate this. In Wangala, a village in Mysore that Scarlett

Epstein had studied, in the plays that the Harijans of the village organize, the actor
playing the role of a king does not sit on a prop throne but squats. The idea is that
his head should not appear at a level higher than that of the dominant caste members
among the audience. On one such occasion, their drama company announced that in
their forthcoming production, a stage throne would be used, and the king would sit
on it. There was a strong reaction to this idea. The Vokkaligas, the dominant caste
of Wangala, stopped employing Harijan labourers. Eventually, the Harijans had to
tender an apology and pay a fine for their assertion. Only after this expression of
submission peace came to prevail. Similarly, in Madhopur in Uttar Pradesh, when the
lower caste people (of Noniya caste) started donning the sacred thread, the dominant
caste adopted violent methods to make them stop assimilating the traits of upper
castes. The point being made is that the dominant castes do adopt methods of all
descriptions in order to maintain their status unassailed.

Often, the dominant castes display uniformity in terms of their behaviour and interests.
Although with the emergence of Panchayati Raj and land reforms, the nature of
dominance has changed in rural India, there is no doubt that certain castes still
exercise decisive dominance in villages. In many cases, the studies point out that
people have become disillusioned with their traditional councils. There was a time
when the council members were compared to gods (the idea of panch parmeshwar),
and it was said: ‘Where there is a panchayat, there is god.’ But now, people prefer
to approach formal institutions (such as the courts, police, and other administrative
bodies) for the settlement of their disputes.

60
 Rural Poverty
Check Your Progress IV
Note: a) Write your answers in the space provided.
b) Check your answers with the possible answers provided at the end
of the unit.
1) What are the different types of the traditional council (panchayat) found
in Indian villages?
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2) Define the concept of ‘dominant caste’.

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3.5 LET US SUM UP

An Indian village is composed of endogamous units, each following its own occupation
traditionally associated with its caste, locally known as jati. The number of castes
a village has varies from one context to another. Large villages have more castes
than small villages, but no village has all the castes. Thus, the members of one village
depend upon others in their neighbourhood for various services. The Indian village
was never self-sufficient as some colonial officers believed. Each village has its own
dominant caste, which has very high representation in the political bodies of the
village. Often, the decisions they take serve their own interests. At the local level,
each caste comprises a set of families, and it has been noticed that there is a close
relationship between caste and kinship. Generally the upper, propertied castes usually
have joint families, whilst lower, non-propertied castes have nuclear families. With
changes occurring because of urbanization and modernization, the families are becoming
smaller all over India, but it does not imply that joint families have disappeared.

3.6 KEY WORDS

Ascriptive : This term means ‘by birth’. Ascriptive status is that social
position which one acquires by birth.
Caste System : Practised in India, it is the main traditional system of social
stratification, which is ascriptive and based on the notion of
mutually opposing characteristics—pure and impure.
Client : While translating the words, jajman and kamin, the terms
used are ‘patron’ and ‘client’. The meaning of the word
‘client’ in this context is ‘one who provides the services of
an occupation to the other caste.’ The term ‘client’ can be 61
used interchageably with the term ‘occupational caste’.
Rural Society and Panchayat : It is a small body of elders that takes up the cases of
Economy dispute among people, and pronounces its judgement, which
the contending parties are expected to follow.
Horizontal Solidarity: It is the unity of the people who belong to the same caste
or social stratum, but are spread across a number of
neighbouring villages.
Vertical Solidarity : It is the unity of the people who belong to different castes
or hierarchical social strata, but belong to one and the same
village.

3.7 SUGGESTED READINGS AND REFERENCES

References

Atal, Yogesh. 1968. The Changing Frontiers of Caste. Delhi: National Publishing
House.

Béteille, André. 1965. Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification
in a Tanjore Village. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bliss, C. and N. Stern. 1982. Palanpur: The Economy of an Indian Village.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Breman, J., P. Kloos, and A. Saith. (eds.) 1997. The Village in Asia Revisited. Delhi:
Oxford University Press.

Chauhan, Brij Raj. 2003. “Village Community” in Veena Das (ed.) The Oxford India
Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Mandelbaum, David G. 1970. Society in India. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

Sharma, K.L. (ed.) 2001. Social Inequality in India. Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat
Publications.

Srinivas, M.N. 1996. Village, Caste, Gender and Method. Delhi: Oxford University
Press.

Suggested Readings

Chakravarti, Anand. 1975. Contradiction and Change: Changing Patterns of

Authority in a Rajasthan Village. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Dasgupta, B. (ed.) 1977. Village Studies in the Third World. Delhi: Hindustan
Publishing House.

Gough, Kathleen. 1981. Rural Society in South India. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Gould, Harold A. 1990. Politics and Caste. Delhi: Chanakya Publications.

Jha, Hetukar. 1991. Social Structure of Indian Villages: A Study of Rural Bihar.
New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Leaf, Murray. 1972. Information and Behaviour in a Sikh Village. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

62
Mayer, Adrian C. 1960. Caste and Kinship in Central India: A Village and its Rural Poverty
Region. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Pocock, David F. 1973. Mind, Body and Wealth: A Study of Belief and Practice
in an Indian Village. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Srivastava, V.K. 1999. “Some Characteristics of a ‘Herding Caste’ of Rajasthan”
in M.K. Bhasin and Veena Bhasin (eds.) Rajasthan: Ecology, Culture and
Society. Delhi: Kamla-Raj Enterprises.

3.8 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS: POSSIBLE ANSWERS

Check Your Progress I

1) The term ‘social structure’, originally coined by Herbert Spencer, refers to the
inter-connections of different parts of society, such as individuals, groups,
institutions, associations, organizations, communities, etc.

2) The most populated villages in India are found in Kerala; some of them have
above ten thousand individuals

Check Your Progress II

1) Caste is a system of social hierarchy found in south Asia, especially India, and
all those countries where Hindus have settled down, such as Fiji, Trinidad,
Mauritius, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States of America, etc. In this
system, the society is divided into clearly bounded units called castes, locally
called jatis, each exercising monopoly over a particular occupation. A person
becomes the member of a caste by being born into it. In other words, caste is
ascriptive. The members of a caste share a common lifestyle – they live in
houses that look alike, they dress up in a similar manner, they speak the same
dialect, they repose faith in the same set of deities, they have the same set of
rituals, and in a village, they are generally clustered together. Each caste is
endogamous, i.e. each one of its memebers seeks its spouse from the families
of its own caste that are settled in other villages. Each caste has its own
political body called panchayat, which is entrusted with the task of amicably
resolving the conflicts that surface between the members of the caste. In
running the systems of production in a village, each caste is dependent upon
other castes. It is because of the inter-caste dependence that a village develops
bonds of social unity.
2) By comparison with caste, class has an economic referent. Classes pertain to
the system of production and there are basically three classes that make an
Indian village:
i) those who own the means of production (i.e. land, livestock and/or capital);
ii) those who lease the needed resources from the first class and use them
on condition that in return they would pay the relevant rent or a part of
their produce; and
iii) those who do not have any resources at their command, nor do they enter
any economic arrangement to procure resources, but work as labourers
to earn wages for the service they render.
The first class is of the owners (malik ), the second of the tenants (kisan)
and the third of the labourers (mazdur). Theoretically, class relations are
independent of caste, but it has been seen that in Indian villages, there is
often an overlapping between the two. Those who happen to own land also
happen to be from the upper castes, and those who are landless labourers
are from the lower castes. 63
Rural Society and 3) William Wiser introduced the term jajmani system in his study of a village in
Economy Uttar Pradesh. It is a system of patron-client relations. At the center of the
system are the agriculturist communities, which are served by various occupational
castes, such as the carpenter, the barber, the laundryman, the potter, the blacksmith,
etc. These occupational castes provide their services to the agriculturist caste for
the entire year but are paid in kind at the time of harvest. These relations are
hereditary and happen to be between families belonging to different castes.
Sometimes, a family has jajmani ties with the entire village. For instance, the
family of the village guard (chowkidar), who serves all the different castes of
the village, receives payments in kind from only some of them, as it may not
receive any payments from the castes below the line of purity.

4) The impact of the process of sanskritization as a process of upward mobility

has considerably reduced because backward castes have found the political route
to upward mobility far more effective in the present-day India. Mobility along the
axis of status (i.e., sanskritization) has been replaced by mobility along the axis
of power (i.e., politicization). It is so mainly because sanskritization has not
helped the castes below the line of purity to move up the caste hierarchy.

Check Your Progress III

1) The three salient characteristics of the joint family in India are:

i) Kinspersons belonging to the joint family share common religious beliefs,
common property and a common residence.
ii) All the descendants of the joint family (male and female), recognized by the
principle of descent, have an equal right on the family property. These rights
are called coparcenary.
iii) The head of the household in a patrilineal family is usually the eldest male,
who is called karta. His main job is to work towards the unity and integrity
of the family. He is the manager of the property and is supposed to supervise
it well and keep it together by saving it from all forces that try to break it.
2) Many reasons have been given to explain the break up of the joint family in India.
‘Occupational differentiation’, however, seems to be the strongest of them all.
When members of a joint family follow the same occupation, it is easier for them
to live together than when they branch out into different occupations. When in
different occupations, they are also differentially placed in terms of their respective
incomes. This inequality at the level of economy does not create viable conditions
for different members of the household to live together and pool in their resources.
Occupational differentiation is also closely connected with geographical mobility.
Occupations take individuals away to different places. Obviously, in such migrations,
it is the nuclear family that travels together instead of the entire joint family which
goes on losing its sub-groups by and by.
Check Your Progress IV
1) Indian villages have two types of traditional council. The first to which an individual
is affiliated is the council of one’s caste, called the jati panchayat; and the
second is the council of the village, which is known as gram/gaon panchayat.
Caste councils extend beyond the boundary of a village. They comprise members
of the same caste distributed over the region in neighbouring villages. In other
words, a caste council cuts across the villages in the neighbourhood. It is one of
the principal factors contributing to solidarity among members of the same caste,
called horizontal solidarity. A village council, as the name suggests, is of the
village. Its jurisdiction is confined to the village concerned. It takes up matters
pertaining to the village, thus contributing to the solidarity between the members
of different castes living in one and the same village. This type of solidarity is
64 called vertical solidarity.
2) It was M.N. Srinivas who introduced the concept of dominant caste. This term Rural Poverty
is used for the caste that has numerical preponderance in a village. It also
exercises control over economic resources, such as land, livestock, houses,
instruments and implements of production, etc., because of which it has political
power. Its members constitute the best represented group in the village council.
In other words, in the case of the dominant caste, there is a close association
between economic and political factors. Also, it enjoys a high ritual status, and
has often been the first to take advantage of the education system that the British
introduced in India.

65